Singapore is getting to become a very exciting fine city

Parking fees going up in December or HDB will lose $100m yearly despite a report that the two agencies, URA and HDB ‘earning a total of $667 million from their carparks in their latest financials for 2014/15. This piece of information is in the mypaper on 5 Jul.

Now why the fear mongering that HDB is going to lose $100m yearly? Maybe the $667m were mostly made by URA and not HDB. Maybe HDB’s share of the $667 was negligible or miserable and easily wiped out by the increasing cost of managing and maintaining carparks.  Actually HDB’s share was $595m and URA’s was $62m, total added up $657m, $10m missing from the $667m.

The report also said HDB’s operating cost was $700m. Can it then be concluded that the total revenue for carpark operation was $700m + $595m or $1,295m? And HDB claimed that it would lose $100m if the fees or revenue did not go up. What does this mean? Operating cost will increase so much to wipe out the revenue of $1,295m and ended with a loss of $100m? So the total operating cost will be $1,395m, tiok boh? I not accountant or finance expert, can only make simple deduction.

HDB operates 2,000 carparks and recently installed electronic pricing equipment and system that cost $150,000 each to save on manpower cost and to be more efficient in collecting more money. This works out to $300 m in initial capital expenditure. Then the savings from carpark attendance walking the car parks would be transferred to hiring more technicians and software engineers to maintain the $300m system. Not sure the savings from terminating all the carpark attendants would be enough to pay for the technicians and engineers. Very likely not that is why HDB is talking about losing $100m a year with the new equipment and system.

And who should pay for this capital expenditure and new hires, the carpark users? Did the carpark users have a say whether to invest in this costly equipment that would raise the cost of carpark management? No, the HDB decides what is good for them (or for the HDB?) and how much they should pay for the equipment. Great thinking and great philosophy!

And this is not enough. There is a forum writer, a Francis Cheng Choon Fei, who wrote to the Today paper that increasing carpark fees without increasing parking fines is not an efficient way to manage car population. I am not going to ask if he is a car owner with a deep pocket or someone that could not afford to own a car, so increasing fines does not affect his pocket, but I think many Singaporeans would agree with him. Singaporeans just love to pay fines and the bigger the fines the finer would be their lives.

I hope the govt would accept this ground up suggestion and raise all kinds of parking fines and car related fines to make this a finer city. We not only have to pay for the most expensive cars, but car related fines. Our parking fees are still not high enough compare to the price of car ownership. Let’s go for it, increase all the carpark fees and fines.

My eye balls are rolling because this kind of suggestions is music to the ears of the people that believe in nothing wrong with collecting more money.

PS. Happy Hari Raya Aidilfitri to our Muslim citizens. Or is it Happy Hari Raya Puasa? I saw that in Channel News Asia.